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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » On the morning of Osborne’s big speech the GE15 betting get
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » On the morning of Osborne’s big speech the GE15 betting gets even tighter. Now almost level-pegging
As we face the most uncertain general election in at least a generation there’s not much you can glean from the betting markets about what’s going to happen except that few are risking their cash on one of the two big parties securing a majority.
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useless chancellor - evens
gimmicks - 5/4
waste of time -2/1
Osbrown - 3/1
clueless - 3/1
catbert - 10/1
excellent - 100/1
And we then come back to that old chestnut the announcement is one thing, actually doing the work is another.
As ever with Osborne the political positioning is judged more important than the actual economy.
2/3 - Where's the money coming from ?
1/5 Fav - Too clever for his own good
Nothing wrong with infrastructure development in marginal constituencies the North, when it's election time the time is right.
Even if you suspect his motives...
http://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/top-stories/rbs-asks-staff-to-come-in-on-day-off-to-do-diy-1-3623099
And the UK is the fastest growing economy in the G7. And one of the top performers now in the world. He can continue to be useless if thats what the outcomes are. One really wonders what you must have thought of that colossus of No 11 Gordon when he started to place the country in trouble in 2003 and onwards finally slamming the UK into the fiscal brick wall in 2008?
Don't take my word for it just check all the warnings form the IMF and EU and others from 2003 onwards.
"Unlike his predecessor, who was the epitome of a useless chancellor, Osborne eschews gimmicks. Called 'Osbrown' by his clueless detractors, he shares more in common with Adams' Catbert: he is wily and pugnacious, and cares little for what people feel about him. This leads him to produce excellent budgets and statements which are forged in sound economics rather than base politicking. Only the most febrile of fools could ever claim that listening to his speeches is a waste of time."
Odds: possibly 10,000,000/1... :-)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11269253/French-bank-dumps-British-assets-contrasts-UK-sclerosis-with-Francois-Hollande-miracle.html
Deficit 5% of GDP, "growth" 3%, go figure.
I thought Brown was dire Osborne is simply continuing his policies at a slower pace.
It is better to live in hope...
Nominal growth is closer to 4.5%/5% and the deficit (last I saw - but that may be the structural) was 4.5%
There is a lot he hasn't fixed, and a lot still to do. But he's made a good start.
(and no, @Alanbrooke, I am NOT referring to the Chancellor in such terms)
p.s. pat on the back for anyone who remembers who coined the term "teenage scribbler" to refer to City analysts
Osborne traditionally favours the former but there is much to be said for the latter. The deficit should dominate the picture going forward and I would not be at all surprised to see even more cuts built into the projections into the next Parliament making it almost impossible for Ed Balls (even with his fingers crossed behind his back) to promise anything like Tory spending plans.
Politically as well discussing the deficit and the need for urgent action on it is much better territory for Tories to be discussing than the NHS etc.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-fantasy-uk-budget-general-election-2015-2014-12
"It doesn't matter which party you vote for in next year's General Election — in every case, you will be voting for a fantasy budget."
Regarding the Autumn Statement I would assume that under the air of responsibility any remaining wheezes that Osborne has for generating bear traps for the opposition would have to be wheeled out today, the budget will be too close to the election for then to have time to take effect, and manifestos will have been widely leaked by then so it will sound more like commentary rather than being an effective ambush.
Rather cold today.
It's Balls who does the response, yes?
Take defence. The coalition has, rightly or wrongly, cut defence spending. Many people call this a travesty and wrong, whilst calling for cuts in other areas. Why? Because they think defence spending is good, and the spending in other areas less good.
Which would be fine if we, the great British public, could agree on which areas were good and which less good. But we can not. This means that *any* cuts will gain the ire of interest groups, whilst hand-outs are generally ignored (ref. raising the income tax threshold). This means that any budget immediately gets mired in politics and 'wheezes'.
It'd be the same for any party that had to deal with power.
If Balls does badly today, he'll be deep in trouble.
Mr. Eagles, handy for Miliband. Unless Balls does well. Let us all hope that does not happen.
Price now below £4.
2014 is likely to be the warmest year ever recorded in the CET series.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30304611
Of course there is no anthropogenic forcing here...
(wearing my PB right-wing loon hat).
http://www.bloombergbriefs.com/content/uploads/sites/2/2014/12/JMAutumnStatement.pdf
It made me think about how we define left wing and right wing. It comes down to how we want to treat the guilty and the innocent. Would we rather that all the guilty were caught even if the odd innocent is wrongly sentenced. Or would we rather that no innocent was ever unjustly found guilty even if that many of the guilty escaped.
Most are somewhere in between, but at the ends you will find mutual incomprehension. That's why all Tories eat babies and all Socialists are barmy and insulated from reality.
Oh well, sorry if that's a bit philosophical for this time of day.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-30300837
Mr. S, there are a few things to say in response to that:
A temperature measure looking at Bristol, Lancashire and London is pretty damned arbitrary.
1772 is not long ago. The Earth is something like 3.7bn years old. There were warm periods in the 16th and 1st centuries. I believe the 18th was pretty chilly. Of course, these aren't covered by the 'records' because the records are so recent as to be of little use in long-term thinking.
The climate has always changed naturally. It will always change naturally. Change is not abnormal, it is entirely expected.
Show me the evidence of anthropogenic warming. Not circumstantial, not coincidence, firm evidence. The confluence of political, environmentalist and scientific funding interest makes me very unconvinced.
It's almost like the Catholic Church a few centuries ago. Of course the sun revolves around us. We're so damned important. Of course we are changing the climate. How else could it be changing?
Do you want me to see if I can get you an invite? (It's in London)
"The only thing known for certain is that the current plans will change. Whichever party/parties take office in May, an emergency budget can be expected which will see these plans rewritten. "
This is the point at which whatever Party wins the next election finds their coalition disintegrated before their eyes and/or their party imploding.
I sadly received none as applied for too many!
I'd favour ring-fencing all departments, as we do with foreign aid. In each party's manifesto, they say things like: "International development: 0.7%. Health: 10%. Education: 6%. MOD: 3%" etc, leaving 5-10% for contingency.
Then, as GDP increases and decreased through a parliament, so does each department's spending. The government can either use the contingency to prop up individual departments, or pay off debt, or do one-offs.
It'd be much saner than the current messy system where departments have no idea of the government's largesse from one day to the next.
It would also give us something solid to vote for.
Then, as GDP increases and decreased through a parliament, so does each department's spending. The government can either use the contingency to prop up individual departments, or pay off debt, or do one-offs.
It'd be much saner than the current messy system where departments have no idea of the government's largesse from one day to the next.
It would also give us something solid to vote for.
That's a very good idea.
We could tell people at the same time that government total receipts is 612bn, and total expenditure is 720bn, which bit would they like the government to spend 108bn less on ... The equivalent on an across the board 15% cut.
It was developed by a mate of mine (I am an investor) but is now being marketed by AXA/Alliance Berstein
"From each according to ability, to eqch according to need" was Marx's definition of communism, and it's what attracted me to it as a kid. I grew out of communism as a political movement when I had a closer look at communist societies in practice. But it's still basically the way to try to live, in my opinion.
Then, as GDP increases and decreased through a parliament, so does each department's spending. The government can either use the contingency to prop up individual departments, or pay off debt, or do one-offs.
It'd be much saner than the current messy system where departments have no idea of the government's largesse from one day to the next.
It would also give us something solid to vote for.Far too sensibłe! I doubt the pols would like it when it became clear that the "huge gulf" between the "saviours of the NHS" and it's "wreckers" was fractions of a percentage point.....
A 15% cut across all departments would be interesting!
But we would all need to adjust our behaviour by the same. Would their be 15% fewer hospital admissions for example?
Oh that's easy: I'd completely shut down the security services; end our relationship with the EU; close down border control; shut down the airforce (we can integrate some into the army, and the navy) and halve the size of the army; I'd end state provision of higher education; spin the NHS out into an insurance supported entity; end housing benefit and unemployment benefit (perhaps with a transition period to a government backed, insurance scheme); i'd raise the state retirement age to 75 over the next 20 years...
Probably a few other things I can think of too...
I've been a lone voice (I think) in here in calling for an inquiry into why infrastructure costs (housing, roads and yes, HS2) are so high in this country, especially compared to our European friends.
Well, another case to point: there are plans to create a garden footbridge over the Thames (a bit, I think, like the Green Bridge at Mile End). The bridge is to cost a staggering £175 million, and will have £3.5 million annual maintenance costs.
Think about that for a minute: £3.5 million maintenance. Per year. For a footbridge. As a comparison, the Millennium footbridge cost just £18.2 million to build. Even given the Millennium bridge's rather wobbly opening and alterations, it was still, apparently, a steal.
Something's seriously wrong somewhere.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-30301363
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2858439/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Teach-children-immigration-story.html?WT.mc_id=e_3728961&WT.tsrc=email&etype=politics&utm_source=email&utm_medium=Edi_PAM_New_2014_12_3&utm_campaign=3728961
Furthermore, the trouble with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money. Which is exactly what's happened in this country.
This is partly what is so toxic for Labour (particularly) about the recent stories surrounding the 14 year old Romanian beggar, with her auntie having arrived recently in the country, selling a few Big Issues and claiming £500/week in in-work benefits and housing benefit, to the ire of a number of pensioners that said with justification that they had been working and contributing all their lives to get less money and a less nice house as a result.
Yep. It would also give more power, visibility and responsibility to the people running those departments. The question: were the NHS chiefs worth their £116 million bonuses last year? becomes easy to answer when it can be seen whether they under- or over-spent their budget.
I bet the increased stability might even save a little money, removing the: "Oh, we can always just ask the government for more money" thinking.
But I particularly like the way it would treat the electorate honestly, for the reasons you give.
Part of it is how quickly they need to do it (before the work on the supersewer starts - once this happens there can be no digging in the Thames). They are also planning to effectively rebuild Temple Tube station.
But we would all need to adjust our behaviour by the same. Would their be 15% fewer hospital admissions for example?
The problem is its not politics, its arithmetic, fairly soon people are going to stop lending us money and we are going to be forced into that level of cut, it wont be a question of trimming back a bit here and there, it will be a question of the government just not doing things in whole areas it currently does stuff. I firmly believe we are approaching a Canada 1995 moment.
Basically the more detached you are from a person the less willing you are to trust and share because you don't know they will 'do their bit'.
That's why ,as somebody said communism does not work for masses of people together or indeed works where there is immigration . Its nice saying fluffy language about communism or indeed immigration but you cannot have both
Everyone agrees with the sentiment.
The problem is that it creates the wrong incentives: it actively encourages people not to save for their retirement.
The first law of economics is that people respond to incentives. And it is not healthy for a society to disincentive responsibility for one's actions.
But even £100 million would be too much, frankly. And whilst I can understand the engineering complexities, it's an insane way to spend money, especially with those hefty maintenance bills.
And BTW, the supersewer excuse seems rather odd.
Japanese government debt-to-GDP is (give or take) 250% and they have a larger budget deficit than us.
They can borrow for 10 years at under 1% per year.
I think people will stop lending to the Japanese before they stop lending to us.
The £175m includes the trust fund that they are setting up to cover the maintenance costs going forward. Additionally, you need to remember (this reflects in both the initial cost and the maintenance cost) that they view the bridge as a park / public space (like the Hi Line in New York). They explicitly didn't want to have a functional bridge like Waterloo or Blackfriars).
Additionally, the government contribution is £60m (some of which is in tax rebates rather than cash and which will also help with other improvements - eg the Temple rebuild).
£120m is coming from public donations and, as far as I'm concerned, the public can spend their money on whatever they want
Why do you people think government expenditures need to equal income?
Where does the money come from ?
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/fragmented-future/
Notable how much Sweden has now moved to the right, thanks to immigration. Historically Unions were very anti immigration.
Mostly from tax with difference in borrowings from finance houses and pension funds.
Plenty of demand for it which is why yields are so low.
After the end of 2016 (I think) there will be no engineering work permitted that involves digging in the bed of the Thames until the supersewer is finished. I think that, for some reason, they want this done by 2018 (an anniversary I assume) but if they don't do it in the next 18 months they won't be able to start until 2020 at the earliest
Investing.com - French service sector activity fell unexpectedly last month, official data showed on Wednesday.
In a report, Markit Economics said that French Services PMI fell to a seasonally adjusted 47.9, from 48.8 in the prior month.
Analysts had expected French Services PMI to remain unchanged at 48.8 last month.
The cumulative deficit to October 2013 was initially reported as £64.8bn. He has delivered an improvement relative to that with very little by way of receipts from the Asset Purchase Facility compared to last year, but it has now been revised down to £60.4bn, which he hasn't.
It may be relevant that there is currently a discussion on CiF on ways of dealing with Nigeriian and similar scammers
The temper tantrums, the childishness, the bullying....... not to mention the debt.
Reading some of our Labour posters talking about him yesterday I wondered where they had been the last 15 years.
Plenty of demand for it which is why yields are so low.
So just continue to accumulate national debt forever, and pay more and more interest every year, forever ?
That's the reality.
There is no need for government to "Pay down debt".
Which moron has proposed it? Is it to try and get Starbucks or similar to pay some tax?
There is no need for government to "Pay down debt".
Are you Ed Balls?
Remember James Carville: "I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody."